Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 7.djvu/58

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NOTES AND QUERIES, no s. VIL JAN. 19, 1907.

On 1 Jan., 1863, President Lincoln by his Emancipation Proclamation set free the slaves in Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except thirteen parishes), Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia (except forty-eight counties). His proclamation did not destroy the institution of slavery, but simply set free the then slaves in those States, being the States and portions of States in rebellion. The slaves in the remaining slave territory Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, Ten- nessee, Missouri, the forty-eight counties of Virginia, and the thirteen parishes of Louisiana were still left in slavery, and the institution of slavery was not attempted to be destroyed in any of the States.

The Congress the Senate on 8 April, 1864, and the House of Representatives on 31 Jan., 1865 proposed an amendment to the States, the first section of which is :

" Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, ex- cept as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist in the United States, or any place subject to their juris- diction."

This amendment to the Constitution of the United States became a part of the Con- stitution on 18 Dec., 1865, when Secretary of State Seward announced that it had received the ratifications of the requisite number of States.

By that amendment on 18 Dec., 1865, and not on 1 Jan., 1863 was slavery abolished throughout the United States, and the slaves who had not been set free by the Proclamation of Lincoln obtained their freeedom.

The error of MB. MATTHEWS is one that is held by many, and I deem that a clear statement of the facts will be interesting to your readers. Lincoln set free many slaves by the proclamation of 1863, but he made no attempt to abolish slavery. There were many legally held in slavery in the States after his proclamation, and even after his death ; for it was not till seven months after his death that on 18 Dec., 1865, slavery was abolished in the States which in 1861 still maintained the institution, and that the many remaining slaves were freed. JOHN G. EWING. Chicago.

BRASSES AT THE BODLEIAN.

THE late Rev. Herbert Haines, in his well- known ' Manual of Monumental Brasses ' , (1861), part ii. p. 232, under a list of brasses in " private possession, museums, &c.," states that in the Bodleian Library at

Oxford there was (in the Gough Collection)- " A Rose, bearing an inscription c. 1410, from a brass formerly in St. Peter's Church, St. Albans," Herts. This rose is figured in Gough's ' Sepulchral Monuments,' vol. ii. part i. p, 335. Just when and how this brass got away from St. Peter's Church is not stated, or how it is supposed to have come into Gough's possession. It would seem to have passed into the hands of the Bodleian with the rest of " the Gough Collection," which, presumably, included other brasses taken from churches, as there are more brasses recorded by Haines as at the Bodleian.

In vol. i. No. 2 (June, 1897) of The Oxford Journal of Monumental Brasses, at p. 80, appears a query from Mr. William Frampton Andrews, author of ' Memorial Brasses in Hertfordshire Churches,' as to the then whereabouts of this rose brass. Mr. Andrews there states that the brass in question was forthcoming at the Bodleian in 1864, but was not there at the date quoted. Replying to this query, Mr. P. Manning states in the following issue of the same paper (December 1897), at pp. 124-5, that he had made inquiries of Mr. E. W. B. Nicholson, Bodley's Librarian, who stated that after careful search among all Gough's copper plates, he had been unable to discover this " rose." Search was also made among the copper plates in the Rawlinson Collection, with the same result. (There is no reason why a monumental brass should be classed with copper plates or kept with them.) Mr. Manning adds: "The oldest members of the Bodleian staff have no recollection of the rose." In the same communication Mr. Manning further states that the mutilated inscription to Sir John Wyngefeld, dated 1389 (among those returned by Haines as at the Bodleian), was likewise not to be found. This is also figured by Gough.

Now what can have become of these valuable treasures ? So far as I am aware, the above is the only time the query has been made in print, and I thought it of sufficient interest to archaeologists to repeat it in ' N. & Q.,' as the wider circulation and publication might possibly lead to the rediscovery of the missing brasses. This type of " rose " is all but unique, two only being known to Haines this, and one

other, which he figures (Introd., p. 110)

though there are examples of other uses of the rose on monumental brasses.

It is surely worth some organized effort to recover or find these, and while it is bad enough that brasses should be taken from